


Outtakes

by VendelynSilverhawk



Series: The Greatest Thing [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bonding Time, Bucky is a duckling, Clint is such a liar, Clintasha lives, F/M, Gen, Natasha balances both her boys, Natasha needs a child, all in the name of romance, and Clint sees it, and watching him follow Nat around is SO not adorable, but it hurts, cuteness and no angst, even a bit, implied past Bucky/Natasha, ok maybe a little, or offspring, or something to take care of, really just to be a mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 10:58:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2426261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VendelynSilverhawk/pseuds/VendelynSilverhawk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint wakes up early one morning and Natasha is not in her bed. When he finds her comforting an insomniac former assasin (read: Bucky Barnes) his feelings go just a bit screwy.<br/>Lie number one: they snap completely.<br/>But he is nothing if not composed and watching Natasha sooth Bucky to sleep is oddly... relaxing.<br/>or<br/>In which two spies and an ex-assassin bond, Clint realizes that he's an idiot, Bucky is a child, and Natasha's maternal instincts are hard to notice, but there nonetheless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outtakes

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was written after I posted "The Greatest Thing" but chronologically goes in the middle-ish just after they find Bucky and before Clint is hurt.

When Clint got up that morning, groggy, cold, and disoriented, his first registered thought was: _rain._

It pattered down the windowsill from a sky painted every shade of black and grey imaginable in a place like New York City, cloud packed dense and low as they unloaded on passersby and generally reminded the world that fall was here to stay. Rolling over, Clint yanked his covers off the floor and pulled them over his half-naked body; it was too early for this, it was too wet, and it was too cold.

                His second thought was: _Natasha._

Last night he had fallen asleep pressed against her space-heater body, ten degrees warmer as her red hair splayed across his chest and her fingers danced across his chest. He could practically see the frost spreading from her fingertips to fill the room, but beneath the comforter they were warm. Drifting off with her was bliss of the highest order.

                Now it was cold and it was probably early- the sky was too dark to tell but his head told him 6a.m.- but Natasha was missing. Groaning, Clint rolled out of bed to the feel of freezing floor beneath his toes. As he scrambled for pants and a t-shirt a blue strip of light along the wall glowed softly.

                “Would you like to know Mrs. Romanoff’s whereabouts?” JARVIS asked politely, but all Clint registered was a faint, British-sounding hum. When he turned up his hearing aids the AI repeated itself. “Apologies, sir. Would you like to know of Mrs. Romanoff’s position?”

                “Sure,” he mumbled as he struggled with the t-shirt. It was still cold, _jesus_. A billionaire who built his own tower should have a decent thermostat.

                “Forty-third floor, living area.”

                “Thanks. Hey, what time is it?”

                “6:13a.m., sir, approximately 59 degrees Fahrenheit and it is expecting to rain for most of the day.”

                “Whoopee.”

CNCNCNCNCNCN

Clint stumbled out of the elevator with as much grace as “that ungodly hour before 7a.m.” could afford him, swallowing the imagined taste of coffee on his tongue.

                _Soon, soon. Then Natasha-_

He stopped dead when he saw the couch. Or rather, the person with dark circles that could have been bruises or badly-done eyeliner, ringing eyes that stared almost dazedly at the blank television screen. Bucky’s long hair was pulled back into a messy bun, strands hanging loose here and there, and his body, only just beginning to acclimate to being out of cryofreeze, was enveloped in what must have been an XXXL sweatshirt with Captain America’s logo on a sky-blue background. His hands hung limply in his lap as he blinked slowly, owlishly.

                “Uh,” was all Clint could manage.

                Bucky looked at him and a range of expressions crossed his features in the time it took Natasha to emerge with two mugs of cocoa- fear, confusion, recognition, more confusion, but this time the kind that was familiar to Clint. It was his “I know you but I don’t remember if we’re friends?” look, and had been frequent in the past few days as he got his bearing and his mind adjusting to retaining information again. Steve was the only one he never forgot about, and to some extent Natasha, but there had been days where he looked right through her before shaking off the ghosts and murmuring her name.

                “Here,” she said, passing him a mug of hot cocoa as she curled onto the couch beside him, mug cradled in her hands. Blowing the steam off the top she scooted closer and let their shoulders touch. When she looked up at Clint her eyes were clear, yes behind them lay a quiet unease.

                “Where’s the superfam?” Clint asked, deciding coffee first, then answers. He padded across the carpeted floor- _warmer_ \- and shivered violently once he hit the smooth kitchen tile.

                “Out and about, for once. Steve has a PR something for the Avengers he couldn’t miss. Apparently public perception is important to the superhero persona,” she said, and when he popped his head out of the fridge he found her staring at him wryly. One of her hands was poised delicately around a loose curl of Bucky’s hair.

                “Only for Captain America, I’m sure,” Clint replied. Then he stuck his head back in the fridge, rummaging for poptarts- Thor liked them cold- and syrup.

                The next few minutes were all about coffee and food, a mug more appropriately used as a soup bowl practically overflowing with pure black brew that probably could have eaten through bone if given the chance. Clint gulped it down like a starving man at a feast. Followed by cold poptarts dipped in syrup, he savored the sweetness of processed flavors on his tongue after the bitter tang of pure coffee beans. Outside the rain still _tap-tap_ ed and cars still inched forward and kicked back, a rainbow of umbrellas snaking through busy streets.

                It was 6:45 when Clint finally took another gulp of coffee and glanced into the living room. Knowing he shouldn’t, he turned his hearing aids up and leaned back against the counter, lounging with his coffee bowl clasped in one hand and the other gripping the marble island.

                Nat’s voice came through clearly, and he could see her lips moving from his vantage point as she rested beside Bucky on the couch.

                “-nightmares. They’ll get better, trust me. I’ve been through this, remember?”

                Bucky’s face was approaching humor, but the pure exhaustion in the set of his shoulders and the shadows that took up residence beneath his eyes killed the effect. Clint hadn’t realized before now how completely wiped he looked, and for a split second flinched even thinking about it.

                “Actually, no.”

                “ _James._ ”

                Bucky rubbed his eyes, an oddly childlike gesture when one of the hands was metal glinting in the rain-filtered light and low living room lamps.

                “Sorry. I just- I’m so tired, Natalia. I can’t close my eyes without knowing what’s coming.”

                A sigh.

                “I know.”

                Then Natasha very carefully set down her mug on the coffee table, and beckoned for Bucky to do the same. Once he had she positioned herself so that she was between him and the arm of the couch. Pale hands reaching to cradle his face, she began to sing. First soft and low, husky voice melodic in any language, but when it switched to her mother tongue it become something from a fairytale, a voice reaching Clint across a snowy plain with all the ferocity of an aurora borealis even though he knew it was not meant for him.

                As she sang Bucky gradually let his body sink into hers and his eyes fall closed, until he was resting his head on her thighs and the lines in his face were smoothed by peaceful sleep. But Clint wasn’t watching Bucky anymore.

                It was like he was seeing her for the first time, or perhaps just letting himself see the truth as years of dust and grime and pseudonyms were peeled away from her exterior. Eventually there was nothing but Natasha left, clad in purple yoga pants and a black tank top, hair loosely wafting about her face as she bent low over Bucky and messaged his forehead with gentle fingers that dared the nightmares to invade the mind of someone she loved.

                If she wanted, she could kill to solve her problems, and she could kill to solve others’, and she didn’t weep over sentiment. But if she wanted, if she _chose,_ and decided someone was worth the emotion, it would take the four horsemen themselves to pry that person from her cold, dead fingers. Perhaps for too long Clint had considered himself solitary in his place in her heart, but watching her with Bucky his shallow believe was shattered in a not unpleasant way.

                _Shit. She needs a baby._

In all the ways that mattered, it was one of the most honest observations he had ever dared to make about her.

                His coffee was long cold in his fingers, but Natasha was still singing in a soothing voice words he couldn’t understand, still smoothing out Bucky’s forehead and watching him with green eyes that promised stillness in sleep.

                _I_ want _a baby._

_No, no Clint-_

He wanted to move so desperately he could have let the mug fall from his hands and simply shatter onto the floor. Something in his chest ached suddenly for her and for him but there was panic there too, hysteria rising to the surface that he smothered with a quick gulp of cold coffee and a jerked movement away from the counter of the kitchen island. 

                _Don’t think like that. Why are you thinking like that? A_ baby _?_

_Could we really-_

No. Even if she could, they couldn’t. It was ridiculous, stupid, a rogue thought that hit him out of nowhere and meant nothing.

                But when he turned around and found her grinning at him in triumph, Bucky curled on the couch with his head in her lap, he couldn’t tell himself that it was nothing.

CNCNCNCNCN

It was disgustingly, horribly, awfully _adorable,_ and it needed to stop _this instance_ or Clint was finally going to flip his shit.

                Natasha was still humming and pretending to not notice Bucky padding around behind her as she cooked, the way he stole pieces of meat straight out of the pan or slim slices of pepper abandoned on the cutting board when she went to get the tortillas. Heat wafted into the kitchen and over Clint’s grateful toes as she lowered the oven doors and withdrew the warm tortillas, setting them on the stovetop.

                Bucky hopped up onto the counter to watch her work, hunched over on himself as she made fajitas for lunch to the backdrop of even heavier rain and darker skies and the tranquility of their plain of existence forty-three floors above the scurrying life-forms below.

                After sleeping a solid five hours, Bucky had woken at 11a.m. looking considerably less worn, and with no Steve to follow around had succeeded in fulfilling the criteria for Clint’s baby duck analysis. Having imprinted thoroughly and terribly on Steve, and in his absence Natasha, it appeared as though he couldn’t grasp the concept of not being in her presence, or at least _someone’s_ presence. Whether that was leftover from Hydra, or a PTSD thing, or just a Bucky thing, Clint didn’t care. What mattered was that watching an assassin in glorified Captain America pajamas slink after Nat while she read a book, worked out, watched TV, and now _cooked_ because Clint was likely to poison them all if he so much as touched a spatula, was entirely too much cute for one tower.

                And Clint hated that he had to admit that it was cute in the first place because second of all, it was a _ggravating._ Natasha was doing Natasha things, domestic things that involved not shooting people, and that was itself a gift to the universe, but add in a recovering vet with serious abandonment issues missing his Person?

                That was when the panic started to rise again with the thought- _She needs a kid_ \- and a curse at the irrationality of it all. That Natasha would be the best mother in the world and she was already the best spy and the best woman and the choice to be one of those things or all three had been taken from her before she could understand what it all meant in the first place. Now Clint hovered while she cooked, while Bucky cooked, and asked if she wanted to train later past a mouthful of chicken and onion fajita.

                He was left with several new bruises, and it was awesome.

                Steve coming home and finding Bucky in one piece was even more awesome.

                But going to bed with her that night in his arms, and feeling the gentle rise and fall of her chest and stomach in sleep?

                The greatest.

                Even knowing what they both knew, having observed for days what Natasha probably knew but wouldn’t admit, he was happy.

                It wasn’t cold in bed with her, but it was still raining.

**Author's Note:**

> Like it? Please let me know! I'm thinking this series is just going to become my dumping ground for any and all Clintasha stuff I write in the future.


End file.
